Accession Number

Medium or Technique

On View

Collections

Classifications

Large pine door inset with six wheel-engraved flint glass panels in blue and clear glass.

This elegant door adorned the central hallway to the Dorchester, Massachusetts, home of Roswell Gleason, a prosperous manufacturer of pewter and silverplate. Two rooms from his home are installed in the Art of the Americas Wing. According to family tradition, the Boston and Sandwich Glass Company made the glass panels as a tribute to Gleason, who often used Sandwich glass in his products. The panels were made using the “overlay” technique, in which sheets of blue and colorless glass were fused together and engraved with a rotating grinding wheel.

Provenance

From the Roswell Gleason house, built about 1840, in Dorchester, Massachusetts; purchased from a direct descendant, Mrs. Mary C. Bowker, in September 1976.